Other Views: How the Big One would destroy Southern California's infrastructure

The annual get-together of American Geophysical Union was held this year in San Francisco. The irony of the venue for seismologist Lucy Jones’ talk Sunday to the American Geophysical Union — “Imagine America Without Los Angeles” — was doubtless not lost on its audience.

Jones is known to Southern Californians as “the earthquake lady” for her TV appearances. “I mean, she has fans! Who has fans?” said the moderator. Jones said she chose her title “thinking it would appeal to a San Francisco audience.”

Many San Franciscans have no problem luxuriating in such a scenario, believing the world would be a better place sans their southern rival.

But theatrics aside, Jones’ point was very serious, and something Southern California leaders ought to add to a seismic preparedness agenda right away.

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Jones’ current research centers not so much on earthquake survival, but on the ways Californians might fare in the aftermath. And her prognosis is grim: After the imminent Big One, urban society is at risk.

“Your chance of dying in an earthquake is really less than of dying in a lightning strike,” she said. “That at this point is not really the issue. … As our cities grow, and as we evolve new technology, we are increasing our risk in a big earthquake.”

The last time there was a large seismic event on the fault that can do us the most harm, the San Andreas, in 1857, Los Angeles had about 4,000 residents. “We really weren’t worried about keeping a complex social structure in place,” Jones said. But as we get bigger and more complex, we increase our vulnerability.

Jones said that at this point, with our new reliance on technology to sustain us in the medium and long run after an earthquake, we simply can’t point to the stash of water and food in our garages and say, “OK, I’m done.”

Perhaps 1 in 100 buildings in this region would collapse after the Big One. Far more vulnerable is our underground infrastructure of utilities. Municipal water lines were installed as much as a century ago. They are decaying and would break in a quake. We increasingly rely on the Internet and cellular telephone technology for communication, and there is no guarantee those would be up after a big earthquake — especially, Jones said, because there’s no legal requirement that cell towers be seismically strong. It’s not just personal communication; grocery stores and others use the Internet for their stocking and ordering. Plus the warehouses that store food in the Inland Empire are far from the urban core, and roadways are at risk.

Old water pipes are already breaking down, as we know from the many big leaks in recent years. We need to invest in shoring up all that infrastructure.

Panic is not the answer. Hard work is. And there are some obvious vulnerabilities. Jones notes in particular that two-thirds of the fiber-optic cables connecting Southern California cross the San Andreas, as do all the natural gas lines. The first fix she suggests, and one that is financially doable right now: the gas lines. Next, everything else.

“We’re all in this together,” Jones concluded. And together we ought to heed her words.